FOW, which holds an ISO 9001 accreditation, recognises the critical importance of good quality data and has evolved a four-stage quality assurance process built on fundamental principles: Training and education; Point of entry validation; Systematic auditing process; Data quality incentive scheme. Key to FOW’s success is a community model of data assurance with a participative issue resolution process with clients. This involves automatic registration and tracking which is used to communicate and resolve issues supported by a detailed audit trail.

FOW is an ISO 9001(2015) accredited business, operating an internationally recognised quality management system, recognised the world over and enjoying the additional respect conveyed by the BSI Kitemark.

In implementing this well proven quality framework, FOW has aligned its existing processes and procedures into formats that the ISO standard requires to demonstrate compliance with an exacting quality standard, which further reinforces its hard-won reputation for quality data supply, innovation and customer service over many years.

Which format would you like it in? We can produce data files in any format including CSV, XML, JSON, flat or relational format.

Data files are delivered by SFTP, encrypted and securely transmitted. We can push to client SFTP servers or offer our own primary and secondary SFTP servers for clients to pull from.

We also deliver through our Online Portal (ViewXone), Chat Apps & Bots, API and Excel Add-In.

The company operates local failover with dual line internet connectivity and UPS clusters. Cloud-based data storage is replicated in separate regional hosting centres for strategic contingency across our local IT infrastructure. Websites, databases and related company operational and production services are also hosted in the cloud with an international hosting service provider holding ISO 27001. Our staff have remote access connectivity to key data and production systems.

Our customer service hours for data support are Monday to Friday 09:00–17:00 (UK) excluding UK public holidays. Customer support can be reached by email at: support@fow.com.

Service delivery support is available as an upgrade to standard support (UK hours). Our customer service hours for service delivery support are 24/7/365.

Any change request that involves IT development is submitted to and collated in a central clearing application. A hierarchical methodology reviews, evaluates, approves, prioritises, resources, monitors and controls all change requests submitted. In a development environment all projects flow through a shared source code repository and are subject to peer group review prior to entering user acceptance testing and production release. Change control is integral to our ISO 9001 quality management system’s processes and procedures.

As each client requirement is different, so is each implementation for that client. The key to assuring quality in data delivery is getting the file specification(s) correct and so it can take a number of weeks to initially refine the specification. Once agreed this then moves to test file production for user acceptance testing and further iteration as needed. Typically, it takes between 3-6 weeks from enquiry to go live in a client's environment.

The most compelling reasons are data accuracy and value for money. We provide a global data aggregation service for the World's exchange traded and OTC cleared derivatives, key market data providers and independent software vendors, so that means we have multiple relationships and connections which you can avoid. Furthermore, we operate a community-based data cleansing model where most end user firms and market participants use our data, day in, day out.

We offer a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence for the use of the data we supply. Where required, additional licensing may be needed for third party vendor data which is supplied within our data files. We offer three main license types; Site, Global and Enterprise. The difference between these licences reflect whether a specific application is declared to use our data either at a single location or around the World, or whether the data is used anywhere within an organisation and in any application, or whether the data is supplied for onward use by end-user clients via a service provider.

We pride ourselves on achieving a high level of customer experience and excellent customer service. We have refined the customer service process internally so that every issue raised is given a unique reference number and allocated to a specific individual to resolve. The process is tracked and reported automatically to continually improve the product and the support we provide to our customers.

We can offer Service Level Agreements for larger value contracts. Please speak to your account manager about this.

Our longstanding USP has been to cover all exchanges that trade futures and options and which now includes building out an increasing number of OTC clearing exchanges. The growth in contract listing and in exchanges has been so significant over the past few years that we are now rationalising key exchange and content coverage based on client demand. This is to avoid adding cost to the business in manual data collection resources which we would have to pass on in higher prices to our customers at a time when budgets are already under extreme pressure.

We review coverage based primarily on customer and market demand. Operational reviews are carried out regularly and when issues are highlighted to ensure our data is fit for purpose. We are always open to any sensible requests for data that we do not carry.

We add new contracts to our database as soon as we receive notification and the corresponding contract specification from an Exchange of the new listing. Typically, this is several weeks in advance of the trading start date of a contract but can be less, dependent upon when we receive the necessary information from an Exchange.

Market Data providers, such as Refinitiv and Bloomberg set-up contracts differently to the process described for ETD, as those providers are more reliant on exchange feeds and as such, new contracts may become available much closer to the time or on the first day of when a contract becomes available to trade.

Traded series Refinitiv and Bloomberg support and maintenance are offered on the basis of the Refinitiv DataScope Plus (DSP) feed and Bloomberg Data Licence (BDL) feed both of which we receive on a daily basis, the latter for clients where a TPPA (Third Party Processing Agent) agreement is in place with Bloomberg. Each day a process runs to create root level symbols from the traded series feeds which are then matched against the mappings we have established. For new or amended contracts which require mapping, the data becomes available in client feeds in the next business day delivery. Any new traded series listed either as a result of an extension in tradable contract months or extension of strike price ranges for existing contract months, associated with a previously established root level mapping, is automatically provided in client feeds on the same business day as received by us.